


Puer aeternus

by slaintemhor



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Angst, M/M, Minor Violence, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-05-05 03:37:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5359652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slaintemhor/pseuds/slaintemhor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the night that Michael first met The Boy it was raining. Not raining actually: pissing buckets from the heavens. If there is a God then that night he and every angel and saint up there drank 100 gallons of mountain dew then used Earth as their own urinal. Michael’s mood was far from sunny.</p>
<p>aka an AU where the world has gone to shit, Michael and Ashton are in deep trouble, Calum has never felt more alone and Luke is the most beautiful boy Michael has ever seen. But it turns out that beautiful boys don't always have the most beautiful hearts...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Puer aeternus

No matter how many songs or movies or TV shows went on and on about how romantic the rain was, Michael would never believe them. The rain sucked. It made him sad and grumpy, neither of which were emotions that would be likely to tempt him into a passionate frenzy. Also it made his hair stick to his forehead. It was just the worst. His hair definitely topped off his whole badass punky loo and without its glorious spikes he somewhat resembled a drowned rat, which inhibited his ability to scare people into doing what he wanted. He could still do it of course, but the hair usually made the job a lot easier.

On the night that Michael first met The Boy it was raining. Not raining actually: pissing buckets from the heavens. If there is a God then that night he and every angel and saint up there drank 100 gallons of mountain dew then used Earth as their own urinal. Michael’s mood was far from sunny.

‘Fuck fuck fuckity fuck shitbags cunty wank,’ Michael’s mindless mutterings were punctuated by the odd bang as the steel drums he was dragging across the storage crate clanged against its metal walls. Just like the rain, manual labour was also on his ‘Things I Fucking Hate’ list, right below ‘anything that hurts kittens.’  
‘Having fun babe?’ Ashton as always looked like he had stepped off the runways of Milan, not come from their shitty bedsit where cockroaches were a common sight. Michael never knew where Ashton grew up – home was of course a touchy subject – but he would bet it was somewhere nice. Posture that good and skin that perfect can’t have been created in poverty.

‘You could help, you bastard!’ Michael whined.

‘Anything for you my sweet,’ cooed his stupid roommate. Though he did start shifting the drums so Michael supposed he wasn’t all bad.

‘So can we go over the plan again here, or are we just going with your usual fly by the seat of your pants and hope we don’t get caught tactic?’ Ashton asked.

‘We move the drums over to the right hand side. We find, stacked behind them, a small box. We take it. We go down to the river and we hand aforementioned box to the dude standing outside Storage Unit 42. We will know it’s him as he will greet us with the code word. He will probably be dressed all in black cos he thinks it makes him look cool and because every one of those agents are a massive fucking walking cliché. Then we run the fuck away to our sweet, safe haven of a hovel with all of our cockroach friends.’

‘Easy peasy then?’

‘Easy peasy Ash.’

 

It was, surprisingly enough, not quite easy peasy. Their first clue to the apparently shitty card Lady Fortune had dealt them that night should have been the rain. The second clue was definitely the appearance of the small box. Having shifted most of the drums behind them, partly obscuring the entrance, the box was finally revealed.

‘What the actual fuck is that.’

‘If I had to guess mate, I’d say it’s a box.’

‘No fucking way. Nuh uh nope nope nopeeee nope.’

‘Mikey...’

‘I was told a small box. SMALL being the key word.’

‘It’ll take a bit of shifting yeah, but I mean we can’t exactly back out now…’

‘THAT BOX IS TALLER THAN I AM ASHTON.’

‘Michael for god’s sake I’m not sure even dogs can hear you at that pitch’

 

The muttered curses from Michael resumed as the two friends moved (very slowly) down towards the river, the “small” box that looked disturbingly like a coffin hoisted on their shoulders. They were happy to note that despite the creepy appearance, it was not nearly heavy enough to contain a body. Or so Ashton had spent 10 minutes re-assuring Michael before he would touch the thing. Their journey was not overly long but the third clue to this being a shitty night was the odd feeling Michael was experiencing. He felt unsettled. He had definitely dealt with this sort of stupid shit on jobs before; both rain and stupid massive boxes that he was promised would be small and manageable. But a curious tremor in his stomach was there that night, unlike any he had had in a very long time. It only strengthened as they got closer to the river and the agent they were due to meet.

‘Ash.’ Michael whispered as they were about to round the corner that would lead to the water’s edge. ‘I feel weird.’

‘You look weird.’ 

‘Dude.’

‘Okay, okay. What’s wrong with you, why do you feel weird?’

‘Dunno. Just kind of want to cut our losses and run, it doesn’t feel right.’

‘Michael, this is our livelihood for fucks sake. We run now, we are living off out of date cereal for the next three weeks! And we will have a shitty reputation as the stupid kids who ran out on a fucking job.’

‘No one knows that we’re kids! No one knows us at all! And I feel like if we do this they will know us. We’ll be the stupid kids who ran into trouble and got themselves killed!’

‘Shut up Michael.’

‘No Ash, listen…’

‘Michael shut the fuck up, someone’s here.'

The boys froze and tried to shrink into the shadows a little. The voices Ashton had heard were growing closer; coming from the right instead of the left where they had been about to turn. 

‘What do we do?’ Ashton whispered.

‘Get rid of this bloody coffin and get out of here!’ At Michael’s words, the boys slowly lowered their small cargo down with as little noise as they could. 

‘Rabidus.’ Coldly spoken, the code word broke through all the other hushed sounds around them. Suddenly the icy wind and steady patter of raindrops on the steel walls surrounding them were hardly audible. A vacuum created by the absence of emotion in that voice.

The figure appeared from behind the boys, near to the aisle which they had carried the box down from its original storage unit. He was indeed, as Michael had predicted, cloaked head to toe in black. He even wore a fedora which in a lighter moment would have made Michael want to mock and perhaps greet him as ‘m’lady.’ As it was the entire cast of Stomp was having a pogo stick party in his stomach and belting out a new song called ‘This Feels Weird, Oh Fuck I’m Going To Die,’ in his head, so witty meme jokes were not at the forefront of his mind. The figure advanced towards Michael and Ashton, revealing two others behind him, both dressed in a similarly creepy fashion.

‘Um, Dominus?’ Ashton phrased the answering code as a question. Michael was impressed he was even able to speak as that was beyond his own capabilities in that moment.

‘A little far from the meet up point aren’t we?’ The goon on the right’s voice felt like pouring slime down Michael’s back; nasal and pointed in every syllable.

‘We were resting here for a moment. Cargo was a little… bulkier than we thought it would be,’ Ashton answered. His voice grew stronger as he found his footing in the standoff. They could just leave the coffin-box with the creepy dudes and leave, it would be fine.

The character on the left took a step forward as if to challenge them; perhaps they had heard the hushed conversation about leaving. Cold intimidating guy No.1 held his arm out and stopped him in his tracks.

‘Well then, nothing further required.’ A moment passed where neither boy could move a muscle as they waited for the other shoe to drop. ‘I said move along, dogs.’

The moment No.1 spoke his final disparaging word, it was like it was a signal for someone else. A clang sounded above them as two figures dropped seemingly out of nowhere onto the cargo crate directly behind the men. In the same instance two more figures appeared from the right near the river. 

Rather than moving towards any of the new intruders, the three men went straight to the boys. The left and right stooges grabbed Ashton by each arm and the main man grasped Michael instantly by his throat, hoisting him to his eye level against the metal crate behind them. He spluttered: tears coming to his eyes as the man began to press on his throat. He was grabbing at the leather gloved hands around his neck, desperately kicking out at his assailant. Big brown eyes were visible behind the swath of dark material across his face and Michael did his best to focus on them. He imagined the life this man must have – his eyes looked like they could be kind and warm. Currently they didn’t even look harsh or cold… just worried. Michael was losing it. He could feel his body start to give up as the breath was slowly squeezed out of him.

Just as Michael began to accept he was going to pass out, the man was knocked away from him, dropping him heavily to the soaking wet ground. Choking was not fun. He was wheezing and panting, desperately trying to get any bit of air into his lungs. He just about registered Ashton putting up a fight beside him against the henchmen. Michael had no idea where his saviour had knocked the brown eyed fedora man away to. For all he knew No.1 could be about to attack him again. All he could hear was indiscriminate shouting, bangs and clashes as bodies and punches were thrown around. 

His breathing began to return and he tried to stagger to his feet so he could grab Ash and get the fuck out of this bloody turf war. At once he was down again, a slice of pain across his side all he could feel. He grabbed at the wound and found blood instantly staining his fingers, a stark vivid contrast against his skin. Black spots were floating across his line of sight. Everything seemed muffled, like when you’re a kid and you create a fort from your bed to block out all the badness of the outside world. Michael really, really wanted to be 8 years old and back in his pillow fort again. He dimly realised he had collapsed to the ground again. The rain was now pelting down even more heavily, washing away the evidence of his wound from his fingers. If he tried he could pretend it was washing away the pain too. 

A face loomed into his blurred field of vision. A boy’s face. He was speaking, he seemed frantic, his hands grasping at Michael’s shirt. He was pretty. God, the boy was pretty. Fluffy blond hair, big blue eyes and a delicate line of scruff around a lovely sexy jaw. Could jaws be sexy? The boy’s jaw was sexy. He was losing a lot of blood, Michael thought. He could feel it, crimson wet soaking through his t-shirt. Fucks sake he had always really liked this shirt it cost him far too much he bought it at an arena gig four years ago so it was all soft and worn and well loved. Had the world always spun like this it was starting to look a little grey in fact even the pretty boy’s eyes weren’t so blue they looked more glassy almost like raindrops and Michael really did hate the rain and

The boy grabbed his hand tightly. He thought he heard Ashton scream his name. Everything went bright, blindingly white.


End file.
